Yaoi. Theme of suicide. A little angst.

Degrees of Separation – 3 – Nobody's Perfect

"So you just wait around to die?" Riku asked.

"I had to go somewhere," said Riku.

Riku said, "Everybody should have something to miss."

Time rolled to a damp, bright drum. Sora walked home kicking leaves in his wake, kicking them harder, thinking of Kairi's responses, Kairi touching Riku like she didn't even know she was doing it, and Riku's smile. Riku's smile was always towards Sora, and he never had any idea what it was supposed to mean.

"You notice the way the new kid's hanging with Kai?"

Tidus' optimism crunched into a frown, like he was trying to be kind, but really, some things just had to be said. Tidus had whispered it with one hand still linked to Selphie's, and something about that had just made Sora want to hit him as hard as he could. Of course, he didn't. He had shrugged, pouted and turned away.

"Hey… don't be like that. Don't shoot the messenger."

"It's just a fad," Selphie, now, brimming with false reassurance. "Sure, he's cute… that whole mysterious thing. But it'll get old. Smile, Sora… remember that?"

Smile.

A hundred histories contained in that one face, the smooth ease of youth combined with something Sora imagined it would be so easy to miss. Sometimes, when others were talking, when Riku was drifting, shadows crept under his eyes, highlighted the hollows, a darker beauty in cheekbones cut with past, eyes bluer in black. Sora wondered what movies played on the insides of Riku's lids, whether his stomach ever flinched at a memory.

"What was it like?" Tidus asked. "Where you used to live?"

Riku wasn't a fad, he was a fucking addiction, not just in his smile but the way he appeared silently, the way he told stories, jokes. There wasn't always humour, but there was always laughter, an audience not amused but vaguely obliged. Threatened. So much older. Sora waited for a slip in manner, at least a little information. Riku was a year older and he was perfect and Kairi never stopped speaking about him, so that even when Riku wasn't there, even then, speculation moulded a barrier, one slipping in between them, one with a lazy stride and fascinating eyes.

"Everything was neon or black. I knew some people for years without ever really seeing them once. You look back and it's like, all I see is lights and shapes and… it's sort of unreal. That's what it's like. Unreal. Nobody ever slept. And even when you did sleep… you dreamt."

Riku's monologues, and people would slow down as they passed, just to hear snippets of a different world, one they would later dissect amongst peers, imagine alone, when nobody could see them smiling. Kairi nodded for him to continue, and Sora wished more than anything that he could walk away. That these scraps of a different world weren't so achingly precious.

"The city. You had to drive out – we would drive out. Weekends we headed on road trips, to places nobody else knew existed. Not places like this. Houses alone, or lakes. This one lake. There was a platform right in the centre, maybe three quarters of a mile, more. And if you'd swum your way you had to engrave your name into the wood, add tallies every time. Dates from decades ago."

"How many times did you do it, Riku?"

Sora wondered if he would ever see a place like that, if he would carve his own initials, breathless and triumphant, Kairi with him, maybe, tan, rivulets of water evaporating from their bodies and into the sun.

"Seven."

"You should try for the Abes! Being a water baby and all."

That had been one of those times, when Riku almost folded in on himself. Tidus and Wakka had moved onto the next game, but Sora had stayed, stayed with Riku, intrigued but awkward. Maybe he was in the sun, on the platform, too. Sora shuddered a little just imagining Riku shirtless and golden, heaving himself out of the lake. There were decays of wings on his shoulder blades and he stretched and turned around and offered Sora his hand. Maybe they were on the platform together. Or maybe Riku was in a colder place.

Sora leant out of his bedroom window, listening to the rain in the night, falling invisible. Smiling without really realising it.

What did you used to think about?

Kairi.

Sora still smiled. He smiled because despite it all, he liked Riku, couldn't deny it. Could bitch and angst, but nobody told tales like those. Nobody uprooted teachers and nobody kept him on his toes and nobody mocked Tidus and nobody strolled down the sacred drive and nobody made him think. Nobody but Riku.

Kairi.

What made Sora ache was that he saw everything that Kairi did. He saw Riku's appeal in every possible way, and with it saw his own eventual, inevitable neglect. It would hurt, maybe, when their touches became open and exaggerated, when Kairi sat him down and said she was sorry, gods, she was sorry, but this is it. It would hurt, but it would be more like a numbness, a bracing of acceptance for something that had already happened.

Who are you going to miss? Really?

Sora wondered if Riku often went to the library. The school was big, and every corridor looked the same, a labyrinth of white plastic and punctured glass, and there were lunchtimes when Riku couldn't(wouldn't) be found. Sora imagined him, then, leafing through the shelves for a few more ideals, a few more surprises. He never suggested the library to Kairi, not even when she was frantic, when she had to tell Riku something. Maybe because he didn't want to feel that slab of disappointment when she shook her head, bemused, and told him the library was out of bounds. Maybe because, in his head, it was already his and Riku's place, and theirs alone.

Stupid, stupid. Just fucking sleep.

Riku watched him. Sometimes Sora would feel the spiky pressure of scrutiny. He was never quite quick enough to catch him out, but occasionally, Riku would still be struggling to flatten a furtive little smile, shaking his bangs, bottom lip slightly drawn beneath his teeth.

Sleep.

Four a.m. was the deadest time. Stoic shadows cluttered out of the streetlamps and the silence had bled to a nasty, high-pitched whine. There was no difference between having his eyes closed and open. Sheets on and sweating, off and shivering with vulnerability.

And dream.

He tore himself away from the rain. He dug his face into the pillow and groaned, beyond tired and only a fierce frustration, faces dancing in and out of the darkness until they were lights. The music began quietly, a whisper of beat. Sora could hear it, beyond his bedroom door. Groggy and trembling, his feet brushed the carpet and he stood. The room was twisting on an axis, and every time his eyes focused, it twisted again. All these everyday objects - radio, junior trophies, photographs - dilating and compressing and bursting into two. The door was already parted, which was crazy, because it was always closed, couldn't sleep with it open, never could. He pulled it further apart.

And of course, Decay was beyond. The floor in replace of his home, the hallway gone. That wasn't what surprised Sora. What surprised him was that this time, Riku wasn't dancing. He was still, and shirtless, and faced away, and the spotlight upon him seemed intrusive, almost, unworthy.

"You're perfect."

There was freedom in Decay, like the moment he breathed that rainbow stained smoke-air, truths came out. Not force, just that delicious freedom.

"Nobody's perfect."

Riku looked sad, looked like he did when he thought nobody was watching, looked like perfection could be a burden, maybe the weight of it keeping him static. "But you. I could care. Aren't you dying, Sora? Dying here?"

"Why aren't you -?"

"Dancing?" one pale, sculptured arm stretched out, hand open. "Come with me. Come dance with me, Sora."

Sora was going to say, Of course. He was going to ask Riku to take him to the platform. He was going to be saved from predictability, saved from this town. He was seconds away, Riku's palm within grasp, and the future that lay there, lines deep and scrawled with excitement, adventures, mystery. He could feel the warmth, hear the music rising. And then, his name – choked, from behind, back in a room small enough to carry a whole, sad seventeen years, and a girl curled on his bed and sobbing and sobbing and wanting desperately for somebody to look back at her.

Kairi was always younger in his dreams, like a little part of his mind refused to see further than friends, ignored the years of lovers. She was always young, and alone, and Sora never had been able to ignore her. His conscience maybe a little mocking, here. Even in sleep, committed and tied and guilty for nothing at all.

Sora stumbled over cigarette packets, couldn't face Riku, dived back into his bedroom, stumbled onto the bed, pulled Kairi towards him. Self-hatred exploded in his stomach, Kairi strangely cold, his body longing for the heat of revolution, and such a sad, small revolution, to take Riku's hand.

"Stay here, with me. Sora, stay…"

"You were the one who wanted to go," he whispered. "And we did…"

"No… I don't want him. I want you. We're perfect."

She leant to kiss him, hands covering his eyes.

"We are perfect."

(Nobody's perfect.)

"Nobody's perfect."

Sora thought for a moment that he had said it, but the hands parted and they weren't Kairi's, they were Riku's, it was Riku, Riku with a triumphant grin, Riku here for a little redemption, and Sora didn't risk the second thought, breathed with relief and hungrily fumbled for lips, for contact, kissed Riku as good as it could ever have been, found skin, but reality was fumbling, too, the jut of Riku's hip and smooth, white stomach and change -

Sora jerked awake, tumbled back into life. He was shuddering and his hair was plastered down with perspiration. He moved and felt the damp of semen on his lower stomach, thighs. If he looked down, he thought that he would be able to see his heart beating. He sat up, drew his knees to his chest, aches of confusion and need, hating the reminding, having to remind himself that Riku was just a new friend, somebody who maybe liked Kairi, somebody who Kairi loved, somebody who rarely acknowledged his existence. He squeezed his eyes shut, rocking, trying to get back inside of his mind, where he would look across the bed and see the knowing glow of aqua amongst the darkness. The oblivion of sleep or the deceit of dream. Neither obliged, and he was still cold and awake, watching miniscule digital numbers strike his chances away.

Still. He carried the night with only a desperate hope in the not knowing, the imagining, that maybe Riku was lying miles away, or strolling down Decay, or within the realm of his own dreams, thinking of him, hoping the same.

---

The black letters seeped into a sluggish mush of grey. Sora could almost feel the muscles in his eyes struggling to contract amongst grit and exhaustion. But Decay was a little like his name. It dragged him out of neutral and into inquisitive.

CLUB TO BLAME FOR LOCAL CHAOS

Recent outbursts of petty crime and vandalism have been traced to a renowned nightclub on the outskirts of Destiny. These acts are said to have been undergoing for around a month, and have included the smashing of car windows, graffiti of homes and destruction of council property. The Mayor has condemned them as 'pointless and violent', whilst Constable Palmer took a sterner take on matters yesterday.

"Decay attracts vicious youngsters from out of town," he claimed. "Once again, this youth club has drawn crime into our community. The solution seems to me painfully obvious."

Indeed, this is not the first time that Decay has been linked with the criminal underworld. Two years earlier, a boom of drug abuse was traced back to the club, which stands on the coastal side of Canech St. Several local teenagers were admitted to Rehabilitation units at Destiny General. A petition by local parents to close the club failed only amongst rumours of threat and bribery.

"It is never too late to try again," said Jecht Anoru, 43, whose shop windows were smashed last night. "We'll definitely try another petition. I don't know one parent who wants that place corrupting our kids any longer."

Last year, Destiny was hailed as one of the country's 'Safest Places to Live' in a national enquiry.

"Still not sleeping, sweetie?"

Sora's mother had a frail, wasted beauty, and she was always in a rush, always meaning to be somewhere else. He saw her this morning through jaded, heavy eyes, and he was tired, and she was concerned.

"You want to talk about it?"

Sora smiled, not his insanely infectious, genuine smile, but enough. "It's just a phase, I reckon."

Her hand moved cool across his forehead, and he missed days when his problems were all small enough to be solved. His parents had always told him that, told it like a mantra; Share it, and we'll solve it. He imagined putting his fork down, telling his mother that he was infatuated with a guy who could be stealing Kairi away from him, that he was sick of this town, sick of school, sick of routine. That he dreamt about Riku and feverish freedom and change. The words would be wrong in this kitchen, at a normal breakfast time. They were too big. His mother would faint or call the doctor, and it was too early to deal with either prospect.

"It's nothing."

His mother nodded, sipped her coffee, cradled it between her hands. Turned away.

---

"So my dad heard this great SMASH and he starts up, ok? And he was looking for his bat and everything, my mom's practically in tears, thinking we're going to all be murdered in our sleep… So my dad started moving down the stairs, straight out of an action picture or something… holding the bat…"

"Your dad keeps a bat?"

Tidus threw Riku a look.

"In this town?"

"He thinks it's better to be safe than sorry. After all the shit that went down, a few years back. You wouldn't know."

Riku's eyebrows flashed above his hairline for an instant. His eyes mingled silently with Sora's, and they glinted a little. Tidus, once he got started. Gods.

"So he's ready to pound this guy. I mean, seriously. But there was nobody there. They'd gone off, musta ran, because he was down there in a second. None of the stuff from the shop had even gone. Just every window, totally broken in. It's a mess. It's such a mess, right now. But the council are going to do it for free, or something. Like, they feel it's their responsibility."

"You think they're going to close Decay?"

Maybe everybody was a bad liar when you knew they weren't telling the truth. A pale blush crept up Kairi's cheeks and spread, an interesting contrast to the auburn hair. Even her ears tinged pinker. Sora looked away. He'd seen the face before, seven, when his teacher impressions made her laugh so hard she wet herself. Twelve, the day Selphie stood up in class and announced Sora and Kairi were going steady. Seventeen. The day she told him she loved him, and his response had wavered, words clogging with uncertainty in the back of his throat.

"Where are we supposed to go out, when we're older, if they close the one club…?"

"Hey," said Riku. "Hey Tidus, where were you? Last night?"

The blond squirmed momentarily. There was something deeper than embarrassment in his expression. Maybe dislike, or shame.

"I was – ok, I'll admit it, I heard the noise, I stayed in bed," to Selphie's giggle, "Oh, so you'd have been leading the counter attack? Bat in hand? It was pretty creepy, y'know… Selph, quit it… ok? Selphie!"

He chased her down corridor, waving a textbook at her ass, running just slowly enough not to catch her. Kairi sighed, turned to follow them.

"English. Catch you later."

A lonely sky stretched out above them, speckled with gulls and leaves taking flight. Riku's blazer was slipping from his shoulders, hair ruffled in the wind. His face was tinged with the cold, the white pronouncing his eyes, which softened when he looked towards Sora. They were sat on the steps, kids running inside to reach their lessons. Even when Riku moved quickly, he made it look lazy and careless. He moved himself up and grinned back down.

"It's got to be said, Sora… you look wasted."

Riku dragged him up to standing. It was easy to take that hand now, in the daylight, when change was merely a dream, and the racket of routine enveloped them whole.

"I didn't sleep so hot."

Riku cocked an eyebrow. Riku laughed. Riku touched his shoulder.

"Then you're going to bed too early."

---

Cloud was lying still, making silent pacts to himself, singing love songs, another ship upon the sea of sweet confusion, because I'm never going to be a smug lover, never going to take these things for granted, these lines of lightning mean we're never alone, never alone, no no.

People would look in and it would be strange and maybe beautiful. Not perfect. Perfect was saccharine love on TV-shows, where happily ever after was the credit roll, and people said things like, "I love you," and "Let's buy a house in the country. We can have horses, and seven children." And though the thought of Leon in a cowboy outfit, with a cocked hat and spurs, was pretty appealing, perfect was not them.

They were about grey, about nights licked with sweat and submission, about feeling alive, about silence, about glances. Cloud figured they could sometimes look hostile, sitting across a table from one another, not speaking. "You're deep," he muttered to Leon. "But you hide it well."

This romance was shredded to long drives in Leon's convertible, Cloud trying to count the white markings in the road, trying to keep track of the miles they made together. Leon hated the city. He was made for desert, for bowls of stars. He was made for sleeping roadside. He was made for a dirty tan and scarred hands.

"It must have a name," Cloud said. They were overlooking the lake again, slumped together on the bonnet. Cloud skimmed a fingernail over the silver metal and frowned. "Don't you think it should have a name, Leon?"

"It's already got one."

"Oh yeah? What is it?"

Leon gave a sheepish shrug. "It's stupid. You'll just laugh."

"What? The Pussy Mobile? No, wait… The Dick Mobile?"

"You really are shockingly funny."

"Cockvertible?"

Cloud was laughing so hard he could hardly speak, more at Leon's expression than his own suggestions.

"Fine… fine. It's called Griever."

"Griever."

Griever framed Cloud's weeks, roared outside his house most mornings with the promise of some new sprawling road trip. They swam out to the board twice, added tallies to their names. They wore their matching sunglasses. They hiked through forest and camped out one night and fucked in Leon's little orange tent, which crumpled around them when it got good. They watched thunder and lightning slash over the city, let the summer rain enclose their bodies, let the sun darken them. In the hottest August they lay naked together on Griever's backseat, ferociously happy but never content, and they didn't look back once.

---

Leon was still Leon. Quietly infatuated, perhaps, but still Leon. He still went out alone in the hours just before dawn. The loneliness he couldn't shake. There was something farcical about it, him standing cold and apart in some blue club when the place he wanted to be was bed, Cloud, warmth. A reminder of the world which, a few months before, had been his own. A little masochistic reminder of how lucky he was.

The silk electronic paused for a moment and Leon downed the remainder of his drink. It was dyed blue and the music had dulled all of his senses but hearing. Everything blue. One of the few places where his eyes were not shocking. They blended.

"Still out late."

Leon wasn't so practised at keeping shock out of his expression as upset, but he managed it.

"Shit, Riku… hi."

Riku's anorexic beauty was accentuated in this cold blue light. His face was swollen with shadow, body sickeningly carved, carved by the bone. He looked like a corpse on display, perfectly embalmed, but still lifeless. Still dead.

"Leon," Riku said.

"How are you?"

"I'm good," said Riku, and when he smiled, it was the parody of a smile, all deceived by the stillness in his eyes, a little like an ocean with a thousand screaming currents beneath. "I'm pretty good."

Leon wondered vaguely how he had ever used this boy, so tragic and pale and so young, so fucking young. He could usually convince himself to let things go, let guilt slip him by. Not this time. He was about to say it, about to apologise, had the words all planned out. I just never realised that you really thought we were serious. I wouldn't have treated you the way I did, if I had known. We could never have slotted. I just wish you could have told me. In that regard, you were right. We're just too similar.

That similarity, which made apology an impossibility. That, and Riku's next words.

"So how's Cloud?"

It seemed such a cliché that Leon almost wanted to laugh; the spite behind the word, spitting it out like a shattered tooth, like bile.

"He's wonderful," Leon said, taking his time, basking in the triumph, all pity dissolving. He couldn't stand that, how Riku was acting as though this was Cloud, Cloud's doing. He could shout the words here, over the music, shout them out (just for you).

"I'm glad for you, Leon. I'm really glad."

"You didn't sound so glad last week. On the phone…!"

Below the belt. Those were the words that would haunt Leon, the words that would revolve around his mind at night, in the long, lonely year to come. Those were the words he would never be able to share, the base of his own shame and the catalyst for everything to come. He would wonder - if he'd held them back - if perhaps things could have been different. They wouldn't have been. But he'd wonder all the same. Some unwritten rule, that you should never refer to times of trust, times of weakness, to use against somebody. Unwritten. Leon needed a book. He needed these things scrawled down, in stone, because when the times came, he always forgot them.

Riku took a step away, sank further back into shadow.

"Maybe I'll be phoning you again, some time soon," he said.

And he was gone.

---

When Zack and Cloud were younger, much younger, they spent summers lakeside,together,their parents drinking and falling to stupor in the sun. Aeris couldn't come, of course, because she was a girl, and she was too pink for adventures, anyway. Cloud guessed that he wouldn't have minded he presence so much, because if Aeris came at least he wouldn't be the slowest, or the stupidest, or the one that could let Zack down.

Some summer.

"I've got something to show you," Zack said.

They picked their path away from the adults, away from the college kids sprawled out, splashing one another and drinking beer. It was a heavy day, and the clouds weighed them down. The air was too thick to run through, even for Zack, twenty metres ahead and singing a tune that had been on the radio on the way there. The humidity was making Cloud feel a little nauseous.

"Hey, hey… wait up."

He was blushing with the effort, hair practically white, then, eyes too big for his face. Zack scowled, but he waited, arms crossed, brows scrunched together.

"You gotta be faster. 'Cause otherwise they'll wonder where we've gone."

"And where are we going?"

With a wicked grin that would never mature, he turned around, kept moving, sliding on damp rocks and skidding over the sand.

"Aw, Zack…!"

"You're as bad as Aeris."

"Am not!"

It seemed they'd gone a hundred miles before reaching the cove. Cloud turned a rocky corner and Zack was there, beaming, one eyebrow cocked.

"What do you think?"

"Wow… I mean, how'd you find it?! It's – wow!"

It was a rowing boat, dirty and discoloured with age, a thick tie of rope slung besides it. There was a mossy green line around the woodwork where water stopped and air began, and tiny black letters painted delicately close to the rim.

"Eekalib-er?"

"Excalibur," Cloud whispered. He stepped closer, touched the frail wood. There were bottles tucked beneath the benches inside of the boat, bottles and a little brown rucksack. Cloud picked that out, pulled at the rusted zip. A map, and a torch which didn't work, and a little red diary, with all of the ink run grey across the pages.

"Same difference, slow coach."

"I think somebody had adventures in this boat," said Cloud. "And now we can't even read about them, 'cause all of their stories got wet."

"So we make our own," Zack said. "Vice Captain Strife. Our first job's to dig it out of the sand."

---

"It took us forever. And it was drizzling and all –"

Zack's laugh crackled down the line. "A labour of love. It was worth it, though, when it actually, like, floated. I don't know how it did that. You'd think it'd have rotted away, wouldn't you? But it was good as new."

"Whoever made it in the first place. They're the ones we owe, I guess. You know, I never stopped wondering," Cloud smiled, "what that diary would have said. Even now. Maybe two guys made it together. Or a dad, for his kid…"

"I never thought about it… always just think about, y'know, that night. When it got dark, and we were like, shit! Forgot the oars!"

"You kept our morale up, though, Captain," Cloud grinned and closed his eyes. "We were fine."

---

"We're gonna die out here," Cloud said.

It was too dark to see the lakeshore, now, and the drizzle was rain, casting distant lights blurry. There were cars, way over there, and all Cloud wished was that he was inside one of them, dry and safe. Water sloshed pleasantly against the wood, a parody of comfort. He could hear his heart slamming against his ribcage, and when Zack reached an arm out, he jumped about a mile.

"Shit, Cloud, don't worry. We'll be ok. They'll notice we're not there, and they'll send out motorboats. Speed ones. We'll get to go back on a speed boat, I'm telling you right now."

It had taken them nearly an hour to drag the boat to the edge of the lake, through a marshy course of sand and grass. They'd been so excited to feel it floating that Zack had given one mighty heave and – away. It was ten minutes before Cloud noticed the current.

And a problem.

They had forgotten to bring oars.

Zack wrapped an arm around him, so that they could shiver in synchrony. Water droplets were hanging from Cloud's hair and lashes, and his eyes were luminous in the dark. He was so scrawny, Zack thought. He couldn't imagine Cloud ever really growing up.

"It'll be good training," Zack said, "for when we're in the army. If you even go, being a brainiac and all. You'll probably go and be, like, a brainiac."

"No way. I'll be with you."

"We need us some smokes," Zack said. "And a good story. You know some stories, right, Vice Captain?"

"So, once upon an island," Cloud said. He stopped a second, rubbed his hands together. "I'm gonna freeze, Zack."

Zack was just a blob of softer darkness, but Cloud couldn't deny that there was something nice and heroic about it, the two of them alone and in danger and surviving on one another. For the fear, he wouldn't have minded staying.

"Once upon an island…?"

A feeling started in his stomach, grappling closer to something warm and moving. He would never have guessed, that the feeling would stay with him for the next eight years, nine.

"There were two boys," Cloud murmured. "Two boys, and a girl. But they were bored of their island. So they built a raft –"

The rescue workers, in their speedboat, found the two boys at dawn, cold and wet, and snuggled together amongst the ropes and bottles.

---

"I always thought that if I'd have been on my own that night, I'd probably have died. I'd have had, like, a heart attack, or a nervous breakdown."

"Same. If I hadn't been so busy making sure you were ok, I may have actually thought about it – being on a little boat, in the middle of nowhere. If it wasn't for your story…"

"We should head out there soon, y'know. What even happened to the boat? Leon and me have been up a few times recently, but I've never seen it, not a sign."

"That's – that's sort of what I want to talk to you about. Leon."

The line froze over. Zack could see Cloud, jaw clenched, and hurt seeping in to his expression. This was the job Zack had adopted. Cloud was too naïve, a reckless naivety opening him whole for use and ridicule. If saving meant hurting, then so be it. Zack couldn't remember a time he hadn't known Cloud, and facing his resentment was one thing, but seeing him broken by that leathery bastard, well, that was something different.

Zack tripped over the words as they came out, knew that his spotlight was timed.

"I know we've been through this before. It's just… look. I know you care. I know you care for him, but haven't you noticed? He's a loner. People are scared of him, Cloud. There must be something that makes people be that. I always looked out for you. On the boat -"

"What's that boat got to do with Leon? That was nine years ago. What are you even talking about?"

"I'm talking about caring for you. Did then, do now."

"So you fed me that memory for what? Guilt trip, or loyalty? That you protected me through that night on the boat, and now you're doing the same?! We were on that boat because you found it. Because you dragged me with you. And why am I with Leon, in the first place?"

(the feeling would stay with him for the next eight years)

"How can you even start to say that's –"

(nine)

"Nothing hurts more than wanting something you know you will never get."

Zack thought of how Cloud had used to look at him. There had been moments when he burnt under scrutiny, and it was always the blond, gazing across as if he didn't even realise he was doing it. As if Zack was the horizon, as if there was something more, as if there was something worth seeing. Daydreaming again, kid?

"It's funny…"

About things I couldn't say if I wanted to. And there were times when I did.

"It's funny," said Zack, "that you try to give somebody everything, but all they want is the one thing… one thing you can't give them."

"Being with Leon makes me happy. It makes me feel like I don't most of the time. Makes me feel like somebody different. Somebody you'd like to know."

"You've always been somebody I've liked to know. You don't need him to be that. Dishonourable discharge… that scar. He's so lonely, Cloud. He'll make you lonely, too. You've just drifted away. I haven't see you. Aerith worries, I worry. He's hurt other people, and he's older and –"

"It's him I'm meeting him on Saturday," Cloud said, revelling in (only real way of getting rid of hurt I know is to pass it on. Weight you can never put down only transfer) the words. "I meant to say. Won't be making the barbecue."

"However hard you try and make me hate you, you know I'm worrying for –"

"When are you going to realise that I can live without you?"

Zack stopped speaking. He could feel blood hammering into his skull, and for all of that oxygen, couldn't think of a single thing to say.

"You don't even know who I am anymore," Cloud whispered.

"No," Zack said. "But do you?"

The strangest thing about telephone calls is that all the time, you're alone.

Cloud slammed the receiver down, fumbled for something to destroy. The nearest thing, blackness on his bedside cabinet, mirrors, you alone. Leon's gift. Sunglasses.

They shot in a thin arc across his bedroom, smashing against the opposite wall into two neat halves. This room was so fucking juvenile, so pathetic. It reeked of years of longing and friendship, and a quiet, subdued blond boy rocked in the corner, scared to talk for the fear he'd say something wrong. Scared to move for the fear he'd stumble.

(Shit, Cloud, don't worry. We'll be ok.)

When Cloud retrieved the shattered glasses he saw that one of the lenses had splintered into little shards on the carpet. He gathered them into his palm, on his knees, and once he was down there he stayed a while, trembling with anger and loss. The blond kid was still there, crouched in his mind, glaring with sullen defiance. Secrets. He knew exactly who he was.

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Thanks - daea, babymar-mar, Holstein, night deluxe, Praetor, Rachel D.M.

I love CloudxZack. I'm sorry. I can't keep it out.

Reviews are completely inspiring, so please feed the button.